Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The information economy has not only revolutionised the way business is done globally, it has also created an increasing number of challenges and opportunities for businesses in the accounting sector.

Online Challenges For Accountants

Now, more than ever, accountants must work hard and find smarter ways to remain competitive, obtain new business, and retain current clients. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence in the communities and industries you serve, you must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better market your services online.

In addition to investing money advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be allocated towards developing and maintaining a website that will bring in prospects, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help you gain a wider degree of exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change in time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a well-planned web and content management strategy.

One other problem that accounting organizations face (as do other businesses for that matter), is that you have only around thirty seconds to give users the information they are searching for or they will find what they are looking for elsewhere.

“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”

Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website

Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants

As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available for accounting firms that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and who can think outside the box about marketing their services better online.

In this article, you will discover a number of ways to increase traffic and improve your business results online.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System to power your accounting website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, go here:

• Discover Why A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Business And What To Do About It
• WordPress In Business – An Online Guide To Growing A Successful Business Using A WordPress Site

Useful Tips For Improving Your Accounting Website

We’ll start first by going over the basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your accounting website and get better results online. We will look at what pages you need, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services websites, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need help with website planning, go here: The Website Planning Process Explained - A Practical Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Web Pages

All business websites need a number of essential pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Services

You need to include a page that explains your products and services.

It should include all the services you offer, such as:

• Business accounting – business planning, company structures, general accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, bookkeeping, forecasting, budgeting, financing, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, planning, reviewing, auditing, advice, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate accounting
• Wealth creation
• Superannuation/retirement plan (401k) advice
• Audit risk assessment and assurance
• Quickbooks – setup, training, tune up, and support
• Specialist services – mergers, acquisitions, information technology, secretarial, rentals, trusts, fiduciary accounting, succession planning, selling businesses, asset transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical activities, etc.

It should mention any accounting awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote the company and set it above the competition.

(List all of your professional awards recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc. in your About page. Image sourced from: deloitte.com)

Our Team

Are you looking for cost-effective ways to sell more products or services online or increase user interaction with your site? Then help visitors get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow individual staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight your team member’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a team profile page. Screenshot image source: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to easily add an updatable simple team members directory in your WordPress site using free WP plugins, go here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List In Your WordPress Site

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities available within the organization. This page can include training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients businesses minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients, you are also helping to provide visitors social proof online.

(Add a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Image source: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively about using case studies, testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online. Go here to learn more about this: Learn How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Highly Effective Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is crucial.

It should include:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Location
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Email
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Online Chat/Skype (optional)

If your business operates from several locations you should make this clear when displaying the address and contact info.

Consider also including links to commonly-asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content like company events, company updates, educational articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your firm.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting site is very hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can serve both as your business website and business blog.

Not many people know this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that can help begin to attract web traffic to your web site, simply by adding content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can drive traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more: WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Create An Automated Web Traffic Generation Machine With WordPress

Legal Pages

It’s vitally important for accounting and financial services organizations to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being contravened wherever your do business in.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your accounting or financial services website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

To learn more about adding legal pages to your website, see this article: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve Your Web Content

In today’s ultra competitive online economy, the earlier you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.

You want to provide great content with advice and tips that will get your readers to share your web pages and come back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services and products.

For example, topics for an accounting or financial services business can cover:

• How balance sheets work
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning advice
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, business accounting, business auditing, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to include keywords and terminology in your content that your prospective clients would search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving your user experience (often referred to as UX) helps you keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and UX.

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide plenty of benefits for your site.

If you provide useful content, other sites may want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other websites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your content updates are in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides links back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides a number of ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to adding syndicated content to your website from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find useful RSS feeds for your website, visit sites of relevant government departments and well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of RSS feeds you may want to consider adding to your accounting site:

• Taxation Policy Center: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/press/rss.cfm
• Australian Taxation Office: https://www.ato.gov.au/RSS-news-feeds.aspx
• Canada Revenue Agency: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/rssfeeds/
• UK HM Revenue and Customs: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rss/rss.htm
• South Africa Revenue Service: http://www.sars.gov.za/Pages/RSS-Feeds.aspx

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and provide something unique. They can provide useful instructions and resources to complete tasks. Forms and checklists can also be great planning tools.

You can provide a range of checklists and forms (or links to these) covering subjects such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Non-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Sole Trader Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools you can add to accounting websites. Other tools can include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we will look at a several WordPress plugins and themes you can use in your website that improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

To view the rest of this guide, click this link:

• A Practical Step-By-Step Guide To Building And Growing An Accounting Or Financial Services Website – Part 2

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